Pope Francis and other Catholic leaders are pleading for help to liberate villages in Iraq controlled by the Islamic State terrorists and to provide the displaced with international protection. Church leaders have deplored the persecution of Christians and other minorities throughout the Middle East, especially in northeastern Iraq, and called for Catholics to pray for peace and provide material aid to those fleeing the violence.

Many of the acts at the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival push to be the most absurd, sexual and extreme. There are plays about incest and rape, another about a phone sex operator, which in some instances actually glorify these acts. In contrast, One Candle Productions presented Tobit, a 90-minute, family-friendly play.

The cost of a one-year subscription to the Western Catholic Reporter will increase by $5 effective Oct. 15, 2014. For subscribers who live in Alberta, that means the price of a one-year subscription to the biweekly newspaper will increase from $30 to $35.

More than 1,200 students returned to school early at three Catholic schools in downtown Edmonton. Mother Teresa Elementary, St. Catherine Elementary/Junior High and St. Alphonsus Elementary/Junior High had students at their desks Aug. 11, the fourth year the trio of schools has run on a year-round calendar.

More than 60 years after the end of the Korean War, Pope Francis has urged the people of South Korea to seek the reunification of their divided country. "Are there two Koreas?" Pope Francis asked participants in an Asian Youth Day gathering Aug. 15. "No, there is one, but it is divided; the family is divided." To promote reunification, the pope said he had one piece of advice to offer.

This issue of the Western Catholic Reporter sees three changes in our lineup of columnists. Ralph Himsl of Lethbridge, who has been one of four regular writers on the Sunday readings since 1991, is retiring. His place in our rotation of columnists will be assumed by Brett Fawcett of Sherwood Park.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – Pope Francis has warned South Korea's Catholic bishops not to let their country's "prosperous, yet increasingly secularized and materialistic society" distract the Church from its essential duty to evangelize. Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, the southern half of the peninsula has risen from poverty to become the world's 13th-largest economy – good fortune that Pope Francis said posed cultural and spiritual perils.

The memory of that brutal June evening in his home near Mosul, Iraq, brought 48-year-old Joseph, now a refugee in Lebanon, to tears. "These people know no limits of humanity, decency, or respect for human life," he said of the Islamic State fighters. Meeting with Catholic News Service Aug. 8 at the Caritas Lebanon Migrant Center in Beirut, he and other Catholic Iraqi refugees asked that their real names not be used to protect their identities as they shared the traumatic experiences that led to their exodus.

Canada's prolife Crossroads Walkers finished their three-month trek across the country in Ottawa Aug. 16 with a small rally near Parliament Hill's Eternal Flame. Eight young men and women, some of whom had completed the entire walk, others who had joined later for part of it, wore the bold prolife T-shirts they had displayed throughout their pilgrimage.

EDMONTON – In a four-minute video prepared by Catholic Social Services, Oblate Father Brian Jayawardhana was described as a man of integrity, faith and compassion. In that same video, a Bible verse selected to describe the beloved priest was Micah 6.8: "loves tenderly, acts justly, walks humbly with his God."